HP High Court Halts Boileauganj–Chakkar Real Estate Project, Slams Bureaucratic Collusion in Hill Town
SHIMLA — Delivering a sharp jolt to unauthorized urban sprawl across the state capital, the High Court of Himachal Pradesh on Friday ordered an immediate, blanket freeze on an ongoing multi-storey commercial construction between Boileauganj and Chakkar.
The Division Bench comprising Chief Justice G.S. Sandhawalia and Justice Bipin C. Negi directed the Municipal Corporation Shimla to issue stop-work orders without delay, pulling up civic authorities, the forest department, and the police for maintaining deliberate silence while a prominent private builder laid waste to fragile slopes.
The ruling arrived on a Public Interest Litigation filed by grievances over high-rise concrete structures tearing through the eco-fragile hill corridor.
Acting on court instructions, the Secretary of the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) spearheaded an on-ground joint inspection with civic and forest functionaries.
The inspection unearthed a grim pattern of systematic violations: two gargantuan structures, one soaring six levels directly above road height to completely wall off the valley view, and a second four-storey edifice topped with an unauthorized habitable sloping roof.
The DLSA report showed that the development openly defied Regulation 31 of the Himachal Pradesh Town and Country Planning Rules, amended just last year. Satellite imagery from 2020 exposed that earthworks and structural additions had been quietly underway for half a decade.
Rampant hill-clearing continued unabated even during the monsoon season, flouting the state government’s August 30, 2025 blanket moratorium on hill-cutting and excavation.
Large swathes of green cover across Khasra Nos. 425/1 and 425/2 were obliterated, including the direct uprooting of mature trees, all carried out in full view of regulatory monitors.
The court reserved its harshest rebuke for the local police. In an affidavit submitted by the Station House Officer of Boileauganj Police Station West detailing FIR No. 216/2026, registered on October 12 under Sections 326(b) and 125 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the identity columns for the accused were left blank and logged merely as "unknown."
The bench termed the omission a blatant, calculated maneuver to insulate the developer, M/s Tenzin Construction Private Limited, whose identity had already been explicitly placed on judicial record.
Facing judicial censure, the SHO personally undertook before the bench to insert the names of the real estate firm and its promoters into the criminal docket, serve the stop-work directives on the site occupants immediately, and step up the investigation.
Setting a stringent tone for regulatory accountability, the High Court directed all involved authorities to submit comprehensive compliance affidavits ahead of the next hearing on November 4, 2026.
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